Is This Any Way To Go Back To The Moon?
NASA should shed lesser priorities to achieve a 2024 moon landing, Op Ed, Doug Cooke
“NASA should focus major new development on an integrated lander/ascent vehicle launched on an SLS 1B. With Orion launched on a separate SLS, the lunar landing would be achieved with these two flights, and at most one commercial launch with additional fuel. This is a much simpler approach with a significantly higher probability of success.”
Keith’s note: On one hand Boeing consultant Doug Cooke wants to kill Gateway because it adds complexity and increases the number of points where a failure could derail the Moon 2024 thing. No argument there. He then goes on to push for the SLS variant that features Boeing’s Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) – and requires more SLS flights. The net result is likely going to be a wash when it comes to cost. And given the SLS program’s chronic inability to do anything on time or within budget, there are likely to be SLS and EUS issues that will also cause the 2024 deadline to be missed.
Or, NASA could adopt an open source, multi-path, modular approach relying on existing commercial launchers, and standard interfaces. And if you have to build SLS then use it as a cargo vehicle only. If a large effort is to be mounted on the Moon and cislunar space then propellant depots should be thrown into the mix. Relying on SLS in an architecture for sending Americans and cargo back to the Moon is, itself, the prime risk factor so long as it remains in the critical path – whether it is 2024 or 2028 that you are aiming for.
Its anyone’s guess right now as to how the election will turn out. As we’ve all seen, when a new Administration arrives they have a strong tendency to fiddle with the previous Administration’s space goals. Adopting flexibility in terms of launch vehicles and space assets is the best way to assure that something will survive a potential transition and put people on the Moon. But sticking with a program that is utterly reliant upon SLS – a program that gets more expensive and extends its target date with every passing day – is not the best way to assure that we’ll be heading back to the Moon. And if this whole Moon thing is supposedly being done to get humans to Mars sooner, then the need to be more flexible and creative is underscored.
Then again Jeff and Elon may just make this whole NASA Moon/Mars thing moot.
Too bad Orion and SLS weren’t designed to do anything other than flinging people out into space for 21 days.
Too bad Orion and SLS weren’t designed to do anything other than flinging pork out into Alabama for 21 years.
There I fixed it for you … grins..
Starship makes all else irrelevant. Not just SLS, EUS, Gateway, & landers but all other commercial launchers, depots, and possibly even lunar-derived propellant.
All Starship need do to show superiority to SLS and hence push to transition to a NASA-SpaceX public-private program based o the Starship is to recover its first stage, reach orbit, and propellant transfer in LEO. Starship doesn’t even have to demonstrate reusability to exceed the capability & cost of the SLS. Within 1-2 years Starship may reach this tipping point.
Starship does not make spending of federal funding in Alabama and other states irrelevant.
Alas, I really think Musk is correct: Only once Starship can demonstrate in-orbit refueling, and make a successful landing on the Moon, will Congress take it seriously.
(Bridenstine and some of his senior managers will be easier to reach, but they are not the ones writing the checks.)
Did Elon really say that first sentence? Can I get a reference in that?
I don’t think Starship is necessary to make SLS obsolete. I mean technically not politically. The whole justification for superheavy launch vehicles is that any docking, fuel transfer or whatever is far too difficult and complicated. Earth orbit rendezvous must be avoided at all costs. That’s what they decided for Apollo, and that’s what they proved building ISS. That conventional wisdom is what dictates putting everything on one big rocket, and therefore dictates having a really, really big rocket. That conventional wisdom is also absurd, since they can’t and don’t plan to put everything on one rocket. And EOR isn’t actually anything new or difficult. I’d say the technical justification for superheavy launch vehicles like SLS would disappear if someone could fly a good, robotic science mission to the Moon, using two Falcon 9 launches and a docking in Low Earth Orbit. As soon as that happens, in reality not on viewgraphs, people could credibly say, “Then why can’t we human spaceflight use two Falcon Heavies and LEO docking, instead of SLS?”
Doug Cooke might be 15 years too late.
The Orion looks and operates kind of like an Apollo CSM except that its mass was limited by its Ares booster; so it does not possess enough total energy to do the job of either bringing a lander down to a proper drop off point or being able to climb out of the lunar gravity field to return to Earth. That means it needs help.
The help they came up with was a mini space station, the Gateway, in the lunar halo orbit, and an auxiliary stage to help lower a lander to the drop off point, and a lander which has to have extra energy in order to be able to get back to the high Gateway orbit.
So it might be like Apollo but its an overly complicated version of Apollo. It has taken 15 years to build Orion. Now they need the Gateway; and the drop off stage; and the lander. That is 4 pieces. All they have right now is Orion. So is the system now about ¼ complete? Does anyone really think they can build the remaining pieces in the next 4 years? NASA’s and their contractor’s track records are quite poor in this regard. And remember the Apollo LM was the hardest part of the job requiring the most sophistication. It was the pacing item in Apollo. And no one has built anything like it in more than 50 years.
NASA gives an excuse that now they would have a Gateway to serve as a testbed for all those long duration systems needed for Mars missions. Why do they need another space station? They already have a perfectly good one in LEO they have only just begun to use. The only real difference is in radiation levels. It’s the same vacuum; same temperature extremes; same zero-G. Do they really need another space station?
At one time the Artemis lander was going to take the entire crew down to the surface and the Orion would remain unmanned, autonomous in orbit. But recent indications from NASA is that now they will leave part of the crew in orbit and half the crew will go to the surface. Apollo redux.
Remember this was supposed to be different from Apollo. We were supposed to use in situ lunar resources. We were supposed to go for sustainability and permanence. Now we are hearing that is a later phase of the program. Now we are just trying to repeat Apollo with a woman.
I could see something that looks sort of like a Gateway if its real purpose was as an advanced engine testbed, think VASIMIR or nuclear electric or some other planetary propulsion system that needs testing. But we are not going to Mars anytime soon, and those sorts of systems are not really suited for lunar exploration. But another space station? Why?
We can do so much now with automation and tele-robotics. NASA would be better off to set up a moon base using 3D printing and in situ native materials to build structures and harvest fuel and water. Prove that first. That is aiming towards sustainability and permanence.
Use commercial boosters. I’d put my money and my faith in Space X. The US taxpayer can not afford SLS. Maybe if NASA can prove the use of lunar resources they can figure out a way to use Orion in a meaningful manner. Although my bet are on either Dragon or CST100 for doing much the same job and they are lighter and a lot cheaper.
Even if Trump can survive another term, I don’t see that NASA will be landing anyone on the moon in the next 5 years. Could they even repeat Apollo, starting from now without the lander, without the Gateway? Lets be realistic.
Cook is on the Boeing payroll, bigtime per the Truth in Testimony disclosure he submitted to the House, so essentially a lobbyist for anything Boeing wants to promote (not to mention his backhanding of anything else.)
/shill
Meanwhile, it looks like Starship Mk1 has its landing legs and will be re-stacked soon, the Roll-Lifts and crane are lining up. Not too long before it gets some air time.
“Is This Any Way To Go Back To The Moon?”
No.
Well said. Good summary.
President Shotwell at a recent investors conference indicated that SpaceX hopes to land a cargo Starship on the Moon by 2022 with human flights to follow shortly afterward. At the moment they are working 24/7 on getting the Starship Mk1 ready for flight. One fails to see such a level of commitment by NASA on Artemis which is what will be needed to make it happen.
Or, NASA could adopt an open source, multi-path, modular approach relying on existing commercial launchers, and standard interfaces. And if you have to build SLS then use it as a cargo vehicle only. If a large effort is to be mounted on the Moon and cislunar space then propellant depots should be thrown into the mix. Relying on SLS in an architecture for sending Americans and cargo back to the Moon is, itself, the prime risk factor so long as it remains in the critical path – whether it is 2024 or 2028 that you are aiming for.
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Stop it! You’re making too much sense.
An approach such as you advocate would slash costs!
And provide more redundancy and flexibility!
Keith,
You said that SLS needs to not be in the critical path. You then intimated, correctly, that NASA might not be in the critical path anyway.
I don’t think NASA is in the critical path to the Moon anymore, therefore SLS isn’t either. I think this was the end purpose to COTS, CCDev, and NextStep. Artemis was instigated by the Whitehouse to keep Government (ahem…Trump) relevant in the pacing because that relevance is dwindling with each SLS schedule slip. Gateway has always been purposed to keep SLS relevant and protect it from competition and I don’t think it was a coincidence that Elon down-sized BFR to a 9 meter fairing…that was a pistol pointed directly at SLS.
Whether or not Trump is still President in 2021, whether or not SLS is still a paper rocket, or a clueless, anti-NASA mindset invades Congress, a serious, multi-pronged, crewed, Lunar exploration effort will head to the Moon by 2025 or so. Mars will follow a decade later. That is the direction the tide has already turned.
Cooke’s concern that commercial contractors are unreliable, as evidenced in Commercial Crew delays rings hollow when he uses it to advocate greater reliance on SLS, which is built by a contractor and is even further behind than Commercial Crew.
A contractor which is also in the Commercial Crew program, and whose Commercial Crew vehicle is even farther behind schedule than SpaceX’s is. But you will note that he does not mention that at all, either.
There are two advantages to the Gateway Strategy over other architectures, both of which show how Washington politics dominate space policy. The first is that it gets NASA so entangled in numerous high profile international agreements that it makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the next Administration to walk away from it, unlike Constellation which could be killed easily. Second, it creates lots of aerospace jobs flowing to key Congressional distracts that make it political suicide to cut. The result is that future Administrations will have to leave it alone just as ISS is left alone.
Given that then it follows that politically the key strategy for the Artemis lander is to offer a starting figure low enough for Congress to approve it, but one which spreads the jobs among as many key Congressional districts as possible. Then, like the SLS, once the hook is firmly embedded, it will survive the numerous cost over runs and delays that will result from the low ball estimate. Of course the 2024 landing date will slip years into the future, but since it’s just a goal President Trump proposed no one in Washington will care about it.
The S1B proposal fits in well to this strategy as it dangles the prospect of more money and jobs flowing to the SLS Congressional districts. And since the new S1B needs a payload, gives Congress another reason to approve the Artemis lander.
No, this is not a good way to run a space program, but it’s the only way to run a space program within the constraints of Washington politics.
I tend to agree, and this is the shrewdness of Gerst and friends on vivid display. Gateway is reaching a point now where it could be hard to kill.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be scaled back, or made more marginal to the surface exploration program.
And this would be true even if someone like Lori Garver or Dava Newman is the new NASA admin by the autumn of 2021 and the Dems have a Senate majority. They won’t be able to win every battle they’d like to fight. What they will be able to do is to tweak the architecture to make it more reliant on commercial capabilities, and wait patiently for SpaceX and Blue Origin make the political case for them through sheer performance.
It is so interesting, ironic and strange when sitting in the middle of a programs/projects that seem unable “to do anything on time or within budget” and then look at all the times we’ve studied such events and conditions in history. Is it a case of, we didn’t learn, cant learn, don’t want to learn or is there some other inherent, unchanging, part of our nature (greed, ego, hubris, avarice, etc.), or the nature of organizations and especially complex ones? Ultimately it is a mix of all of that, but it remains ironic and sad that humans incessantly need to keep reinventing the wheel, and at what cost and waste that could have better gone to the greater good. Oh well.
Good question.
After the success of Falcon Heavy, the persistence of SLS astonishes me, since the SLS costs are so crazy high in comparison.
What will it take for a person with real power, to be the first to say the Emperor is actually naked? Why hasn’t it happened already?
So it sounds like NASA current plan is politically rather than technically motivated. Hope that new AA comes on the scene soon so he can figure out how best to proceed.
To put it mildly.
But really, there is just no way on Kanye’s Green Earth that Boeing is going to be able to develop, test, and integrate an Exploration Upper Stage that hasn’t even had a CDR yet by 2024 A.D., short of being given emergency crash program funding and a ruthless NASA oversight manager with a license to kill. It took/is taking SLS to go from PDR to first launch seven (eight?) years – and yet we’re expecting that Boeing could do the same with a Block 1B in just four? And will that include a non-crewed test flight, or will they just fly humans on a previously unflown upper stage, and give the ASAP board a collective stroke?
I agree, but you know better than I that NASA can only do that over Richard Shelby’s dead body.
I don’t think, by the way, that a putative Warren Administration, even if it appoints Lori Garver (who I like) as admin, would be able to kill SLS or Artemis, even with a Senate majority. The support for the program goes well beyond Richard Shelby; it’s bipartisan, and, what is more, international, too. There’s only so much political capital a presidency can expend on something like this, and its inbox will be full.
But that does not mean it won’t tinker with it. Stretch out the schedule. Change the architecture. Use more commercial capabilities. Shift some funding to Earth science stuff.
I think Orion itself is a major constraint. Its a vehicle that holds at the most, four crew, but for Artemis, will hold three – just like Apollo. That means two crew on the surface and one in lunar orbit (just like Apollo) – on a small vehicle attached to a new version of the LEM, launched on a large, fully expendable booster (SLS is the new Saturn V) – in effect, a repeat of Apollo (at least until and if we get to the point of setting up lunar bases). Yes, Gateway is a new element, but I’m not convinced its a net positive.
As Keith says, this may all be moot if NASA’s Artemis crew are greeted by SpaceX personnel on the surface in 2024.
But if we want to look at alternative mission architectures, how about a modular Moon-Mars transfer vehicle (call it a ‘spaceship’) that is assembled in LEO, perhaps at the ISS, and can carry multiple commercial landers, and a much larger crew complement. Instead of putting two astronauts on the surface – put six! Plus rovers. Or have two separate landing missions in different locations on the lunar surface simultaneously. Have perhaps four astronauts in orbit (total crew complement of ten), or have such a vehicle dock with Gateway when necessary. The vehicle remains permanently in space – nothing returns to Earth, so no need for re-entry capability – we rely on commercial crew for the Earth to LEO leg, and for Earth return.
Suddenly, we don’t need Orion – or at least, Orion is not the critical capability. If the crew get to the spaceship via Dragon Crew or Starliner, that’s sufficient. The money saved on Orion can then be invested to build this new modular craft.
Such a vehicle would then be expandable for crewed Mars missions in the 2030s, but we could gain valuable experience in operating a large spaceship to the Moon and back, rather than sitting in an Orion capsule. And everything is fully reusable, rather than thrown away after each mission at great cost. Money saved through reusability means it can be invested into perhaps building a second spaceship for greater mission flexibility – a mission to the Moon on one vehicle, whilst the other is in LEO preparing for a follow-on mission, or an near-earth asteroid rendezvous mission. You also then have a backup capability in case of an emergency situation.
The components of the vehicle could be launched either by SLS – if its actually flying – or by commercial space launch such as Starship-Super Heavy or New Glenn. Assembled in LEO, in the same way the ISS was, and equipped with solar-electric propulsion for lunar missions, and eventually, nuclear-thermal or nuclear-electric propulsion for Mars missions or for missions elsewhere.
To me, this is a much more elegant and sophisticated approach for sustained crewed spaceflight beyond Earth orbit, than rehashing Apollo which risks another stop and start approach and the prospect that a future administration cancels missions once Artemis 3 is done. It provides a capability infrastructure for permanent human space exploration across the inner solar system, and whilst the up-front costs might be high, that’s sunk cost, rather than sustained high investment.
Of course, cost can be reduced even further if NASA drops SLS – but then I’m in fantasy-land, I know.